


Lucy in the Sky with Diamonds Interpreted

by RocknRoll1968



Category: The Beatles (Band)
Genre: Comments always welcome!, Drug Use, LSD, Lennon/McCartney - Freeform, McLennon, Meta, Other, This meta brought to you by Weed, fannish non-fiction, song analysis
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-11-05
Updated: 2020-11-05
Packaged: 2021-03-09 05:08:49
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,199
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/27399271
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/RocknRoll1968/pseuds/RocknRoll1968
Summary: Ever wonder what John was going on about in the vivid lyrics of this song? Come in and find out!The underlying meaning of the famous psychedelic song revealed.
Kudos: 6





	Lucy in the Sky with Diamonds Interpreted

**Author's Note:**

> Note: This piece (with the exception of the song lyrics and photographs) is copyright 2020 RocknRoll1968. It may not be reproduced in whole or in part without the express written permission of the author.

  
**[Lucy in the Sky with Diamonds](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=naoknj1ebqI)**  
Interpretation by RocknRoll1968 and Cannabis (as a team)  


_Picture yourself in a boat on a river  
With tangerine trees and marmalade skies  
Somebody calls you  
You answer quite slowly  
A girl with kaleidescope eyes_

_Cellophane flowers of yellow and green  
Towering over your head  
Look for the girl with the sun in her eyes and she's gone_

_Lucy in the Sky with Diamonds  
Lucy in the Sky with Diamonds_

_Follow her down to a bridge by a fountain  
Where rocking horse people eat marshmallow pies  
Everyone smiles as you drift past the flowers  
That grow so incredibly high_

_Lucy in the Sky with Diamonds  
Lucy in the Sky with Diamonds_

_Newspaper taxis appear on the shore  
Waiting to take you away  
Climb in the back with your head in the clouds  
and you're gone _

_Lucy in the Sky with Diamonds  
Lucy in the Sky with Diamonds  
_

_Picture yourself on a train in a station  
With plasticine porters with looking-glass ties  
Suddenly someone is there at the turnstile  
The girl with kaleidescope eyes_

_Lucy in the Sky with Diamonds  
Lucy in the Sky with Diamonds  
_

Ok, so it's easy enough to establish that this song is about LSD. It's right there in the title. John had to deny it, because there was always a campaign to keep the Beatles' image squeaky-clean, but he and the others were definitely doing tons of LSD in the mid-to-late '60s. This is well-documented. What I'm saying is that this song describes a specific trip that John had, and I'm going to translate the symbolic/LSD imagery into literal terms.

_Picture yourself in a boat on a river  
With tangerine trees and marmalade skies_

Later in the song we see cars featured prominently, and this gives us a clue about the beginning of the song and what it means. On an LSD trip, what might resemble a river and a boat, in the middle of London (barring an actual river and boat)? A road and a car. A road is like a black river of movement down which cars float, like boats. This would be a very normal thing to think on LSD.

And the "tangerine trees and marmalade skies"? Well, think about the setting John is in. He's in the middle of London inside a car (probably a taxi), driving down the road. What would he see? Street lamps topped with round orange lights = "tangerine trees". Since the street lights are on, this means it is night time. If you've ever been in a big city at night, you know that light pollution makes the sky look orange = marmalade skies.

Tangerine trees visible in this shot of 1960s Piccadilly Circus:  


_Somebody calls you  
You answer quite slowly  
A girl with kaleidescope eyes_

John is with someone. Her eyes look kaleidescopic and magical due to the acid. Time feels slowed.

_Cellophane flowers of yellow and green  
Towering over your head_

You might already have an idea about this part, after the "tangerine trees"/street lamps. Where, on a city street, would we see prominent yellow and green objects, resembling flowers? They also have to be up very high, over our heads. In a traffic light. The round green and yellow lights "bloom" into colour as they light up, and the special glass covering them makes them look like they're made of cellophane.

A green cellophane flower in 1960s London, with lots of others in the background (both  
the red and yellow "flowers" can be seen since this is a long exposure):  


_Look for the girl with the sun in her eyes and she's gone_

John turns and sees the woman has gotten out of the car.

_Follow her down to a bridge by a fountain  
Where rocking horse people eat marshmallow pies  
Everyone smiles as you drift past the flowers  
That grow so incredibly high_

They are at a park or public square with a bridge and a fountain. The second line is a little more obtuse, but there may have been a group of people eating ice cream cones, or something along those lines--something white and fluffy-looking that could be interpreted as marshmallow. Possibly there was a carousel, hence the "rocking horse" reference, or perhaps people were rocking back and forth with laughter or on acid trips of their own (tons of people were dropping acid in those days, when it was still legal). People around him are happy, and John continues his walk past more street lamps.

_Newspaper taxis appear on the shore  
Waiting to take you away  
Climb in the back with your head in the clouds  
and you're gone _

Here's the best evidence for the 'street-as-river' metaphor. The taxis are boats, arriving at the "shore"/curb to pick people up. Why are they "newspaper" taxis? London taxis back then did not have advertising on them that I am aware of, but perhaps John was combining imagery of the London buses with that of taxis, since the buses certainly did feature wordy ads on their sides, making them resemble newspapers. It's also possible that the taxis were simply reflecting the brightly lit advertising in the surroundings on their reflective sides, which is something a person on LSD would definitely notice and enjoy.

A wordy London bus in the 1960s:  


John gets back in the taxi when the walk is over, and his head is very much in the clouds as he enjoys his acid trip. The "and you're gone" is probably my favourite line. It can mean so many things. He's gone from the scene literally, because the taxi just drove him away, he might even have reached some ego-destroying peak of his acid trip, which took away his artificial ego-self, and perhaps he simply felt that he was able to lose himself completely in the joy of the trip, to the point that he lost his self-consciousness.

_Picture yourself on a train in a station_  
_With plasticine porters with looking-glass ties_  
_Suddenly someone is there at the turnstile_  
_The girl with kaleidescope eyes_

And here we have the next day, after the acid trip. John is on a train, waiting to leave the station. The porters in their uniforms look a bit comical to him, like clay models all made alike. Their ties are "looking-glass" because they all look the same and therefore reflect each other. Through the window he sees the same girl who shared the trip with him, and she's running to join him. Even though he's not high any more, her eyes still look kaleidescopically beautiful to him because he loves her so much (and "she" might not actually be a she, it seems likely "she" is Paul, but that's a whole other meta). The coda expresses John's joy at his companion's presence. The refrain, which is the title, not only represents LSD, but also the object of John's affection: His love for "Lucy" is of the profound sort that would prompt a statement like, "If I could, I would paint your image in the sky with the diamond stars".

This song is a beautiful documentation of what was undoubtedly a beautiful acid trip. It's always a joy to listen to.

~

**Author's Note:**

> A/N: Please let me know what you thought. Hope you found it interesting. :-)


End file.
